Thriving Intercultural Marriages
Building a family culture where both partners (and possible children) feel implicitly understood, feel they belong and thrive.
Intercultural Marriages are a special kind of intercultural team and we gladly help you build yours!
In our Thriving Intercultural Marriages curriculum we put the Three Colors of Worldview front and center. We'll use it to understand our own worldview in a more explicit way and understand our spouse's worldview. We then apply this understanding to overcome differences in communication and conflict styles, to better understand each other's (Christian) faith.
The online Thriving Intercultural Marriages workshop is a 7-week journey where you meet online once/week with your facilitators and fellow participants, participate in group chats and commit to self-study and discussions with your spouse.
Click here for dates/times of future workshops.
Workshop topics:
1. Heartset & Mindset for Effective Intercultural Interaction
In a fun way, we’ll take an honest look at our own cultural perceptions and biases. Then we’ll come up with some “Best Practices” for interacting in intercultural situations.
The emphasis is on becoming a Cultural Learner. The key thought is that you’re not expected to change your DNA, who you are – you’re expected to seek to understand your spouse and to modify your behavior to create win-win situations and more fruitful interactions.
When you seek to understand the other and persist in modifying your behavior, you will embrace what is of value in your spouse’s culture and will change and grow, but in a controlled and more organic way.
2. Understanding Worldviews – How do I see the world? How do you see it differently?
Worldviews (Honor/Shame, Innocence/Guilt, Power/Fear) are at the heart of culture. They are at the core of your belief system and are powerful motivators and demotivators for our thinking, speaking and actions.
Through an online questionnaire and report, you’ll discover your own worldview and start learning about worldviews.
As you begin to understand your own and your spouse’s worldview, you’ll learn to discern and articulate what support you need from your spouse to function well in a situation where your own worldview is no longer dominant or implicitly understood.
What can we learn from each primary worldview to strengthen our marriage?
3. Intercultural Communication, Intercultural Teams
We dive deeper into the Three Colors of Worldview and look at how the Primary Worldviews affect our Communication, understanding of Trust and our understanding of the Size of our Marriage.
Communication in a mono-cultural marriage is an art due to gender and personality differences. Intercultural marriages add a layer of complexity. We will delve deeper into the concept and principles of Intercultural Communication and each couple will make their own communication plan.
4. Worldviews in the Bible - Understanding each other's Christianity
We’ll explore the three primary worldviews from a Christian perspective. Where do they come from? What do they tell us about Salvation? How can our understanding of each primary worldview enrich our experience of salvation?
Through discussions you’ll learn to understand the cultural dimension and expression of your own faith and your spouse’s faith and articulate what support you need from the other to do well spiritually.
5. Intercultural Conflict Resolution, Building a thriving Family Culture -1
Conflict Resolution & Reconciliation has a lot in common with communication and we will draw on some of the lessons from week 3 as we delve into the cultural dimension of conflict resolution vs. reconciliation.
Building a Thriving Family Culture starts with understanding how various cultures look at the concept of being a family. Again we use the lens of Three Colors of Worldview to bring those differences to the light. As we understand the implicit expectations of each other, we can start being intentional about building a family culture.
We’ll make an action plan for the future, based on the insights and tools learned. We will also look at the issue of different views on marriage, leadership etc. by the societies and families each spouse grew up in. How do you reconcile those as an intercultural couple and how do you weave in a Biblical view of marriage?
6. Overcoming Roadblocks, Building a Thriving Family Culture - 2
We will reflect on the learning of the past weeks, celebrate our successes and identify our roadblocks to a Thriving Intercultural Marriage.
Anticipating and identifying future roadblocks helps to diminish and mitigate their effects or even eliminate them all together.
We'll continue putting the pieces together to build our Thriving Intercultural Marriage and present our (draft) Thriving Intercultural Family Manifests.p.s. This is a marriage enrichment course led by intercultural couples who are experienced intercultural trainers. They are not counselors but can refer you to a counselor when needed.